5 Things That Make Me Proud To Be An American This Week

Every week, I find five things that make me proud to live in these Great United States. This week, it’s golf, zombies, a fat Chinese kid, and more.

This Steven Seagal thing has been flat-out tremendous from the moment it broke. It went from zero to holy ass are you serious in something like two seconds. It’s the Bugatti Veyron of retarded celebrity stories.

I got to work the other day and had at least three IMs waiting on me. Two of them were for work. Yeah right, like that’s happening first thing in the morning. But the other one, it had the goods:

nWo_dude_69420: did you hear about Steven Seagal

Mr. MURRAY: yes I’m aware of LAWMAN

nWo_dude_69420: omgz sex trafficking

Mr. MURRAY: lol watt

The thing here isn’t that Steven Seagal is some kind of sexual deviant that hires women (mostly Russian, obviously) off of Craigslist and makes them live in his basement as his sex slaves. No, we knew this already. Or we should have. Well, we did but we didn’t.

I mean we didn’t know know, but if you had been walking down the street a week ago, a year ago, whatever, and a guy came up and asked you “…would you believe me if I told you that Steven Seagal keeps a harem of women in the basement of his Louisiana ranch to feed his voracious sexual appetites?” your answer would have been “Duh.”

Duh, indeed.

Phil Mickelson always bugged me because he was supposed to be the next Guy. He was going to be the Other Guy for Tiger. He was going to be the guy who could stare Tiger down on Sunday at Augusta or Pebble Beach or wherever.

He was the Great White Hope. Which is hilarious because golf is the whitest thing on earth not called “hockey”. But there was a sense, a while back, that Tiger was going to kick open the gates and golf would soon be flooded by all different kinds of people. People who weren’t traditionally allowed onto golf courses. People with…brown skin.

This didn’t happen. What also didn’t happen was Phil stepping up and challenging Tiger on a regular basis. So the onus fell onto the next white guy, and when he choked, it went onto the next, and so on. They could pave another dumbass bridge at Augusta with the names of the white guys Tiger has mowed down over the years: David Duval, Justin Leonard, Ernie Els, Chris DiMarco, Sergio Garcia, and literally hundreds more. Literally. Tiger couldn’t have emasculated these Guys any more if he had grabbed each of their wives and sexed them right there on the 18th green. Which probably happened anyway.

But Phil was the first of those Guys. And for years he was just as big as pussy as the rest of them. Plus he had bigger tits than just about any of Tiger’s, ah, conquests. And he’s left-handed. Who plays golf left-handed? An asshole, that’s who.

Then a funny thing happened. He won the Masters. And then he won it again. And then, last week, with the entire Earth watching Augusta and focusing on Tiger, Phil did something awesome: he nutted up and won. Again. For the third time. I mean he punched poor Lee Westwood right in the dick and took the Masters away from him. It was certified bad ass.

Apparently Phil is celebrating the Masters in the exact sameway I would: by wearing the green jacket everywhere. I wouldn’t take that thing off for a month if I were him.

Generally by the time an idea or meme or concept or whatever makes it into the mainstream consciousness of America, it’s already well past it’s sell-by date. That is, to say, the idea or meme or concept or whatever is, in fact, played out.

I consider myself to be an arbiter of all things played out. The rule of thumb is usually Are my parents aware of this? If yes, then, well, you know. It’s like when you go home for Christmas and all your cousin wants to tell you about is “Seriously that fat kid doing the Star Wars stuff is hilarious. I just saw it the other day. You gotta see it.”

You know what’s only slightly less played out than the Star Wars Kid? Zombies. They’ve been hovering on the edge for a while, but entering politics? In the South? I can’t think of anything more white bread mainstream than that. I mean, what’s next, recording a country album? Really?

Come on, zombies. I knew you kind of sucked, but show some self-respect.

A parable:

Some guys worked at a pizza kitchen and made a pretty popular type of pizza. This pizza was sold by a Big Pizza Place. A lot of these guys then walked out and started another pizza kitchen and got bought by That Other Big Pizza Place. They then made several even more popular types of pizza.

Seven years later, the two main guys walked out the door. Actually, they got fired before they could quit. Whatever. They then started a whole new pizza kitchen. Again. But this time it was with some of the first Big Pizza Place’s money.

Also: that parable? It’s not so much a parable: it actually happened. This week. But instead of pizza it was actually about video games. It just sounded a lot more delicious when I made it about pizza.

God, just look at that. It makes the heart soar. He’s good enough to make you forget that Whitney Houston is now a 90 year-old crackhead. He’s good enough to make you remember that Dolly Parton wrote that song and did it first (and best).

But is he good enough to make you remember this?

Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s been too long since we had a Burt Reynolds sighting around these parts. Ideally that Taiwanese kid and Burt would team up in a buddy cop film; it would be kind of like Rush Hour but even more racist, if possible.

This thing would have it all: a case of mistaken identity, a pair of twins trading places, centuries-old Chinese treasure, the overthrow of the Communist regime, the climax of the Google/China standoff, and the ghost of Dom DeLuise. All of this plays out against the backdrop of a dramatic re-taking of Hong Kong by the British.

The big finish would be a car chase (duh): Burt and the kid have the old Chinese treasure, the separated but-now reunited twins, and General Tso’s Chicken and they’re trying to escape, but the People’s Liberation Army is hot on their trail. It ends when Burt jumps the kid’s souped-up Dodge Challenger knockoff over the Taiwan Strait and crashes it on a container ship. Then Jerry Reed steps out and reveals himself as the captain of the ship. A ship that is, by the way, headed for America.